Whispers Out Of The Dust: A Haunted Journey Through The Lost American West (Dark Trails Saga)

by David J. West

  Chief John rubbed his chin and said, “Get me the drum and I will stand by you and play, to protect you both. We will see where the evil one emerges and make the spot clear in all of our minds and so be able to trap him in the morning. And of course, once we see him, we will run back into the house.”

  “Won’t he chase us? How fast is he?”

  “I don’t know that. I haven’t seen him move in quite some time.”

  Levi scowled at that but on Eliza’s request he would submit and be a part of the mad scheme.

  “Good,” said Chief John, “we will trap him yet.”

  To this they agreed and Eliza went and got the drum and Chief John slowly and quietly began to beat it while chanting an ancient song.

  And as the sun fully slipped away and hid itself, darkness fell upon their shoulders with its own weighty resolve. The moon was bright and splashed everything outside in a cold grey luminosity.

  And something stirred in the earth, something black that seemed to swallow any faint light reaching from their lantern. It was as if a patch of darkness sucked at the moonbeams and ate them, like a whirlpool of doubt and pain.

  Eliza and Levi clutched at each other but remained fixed in place, it was impossible to tell just where the gloom was emerging from the ground as the horrid wave spread outward across the yard. It took them each a moment to realize that Chief John was already playing the sacred drum, beating back against the fear.

  The great shadowy spider reared up on all of its legs and swayed at them, menacing and vulgar. It appeared far larger than they had previously imagined and they were now transfixed in place by fear and loathing. Chief John’s voice was muffled by the waves of nausea the shadow gave off and Levi felt as if he would retch. Eliza held her breath.

  A Model T roared into the driveway and Mr. Farragut jumped out with a shotgun in one hand and a whiskey bottle in the other, but he obviously had no intention of drinking. Instead he had a burning rag stuffed in the top. “I’ve had enough! I’m gonna burn you out!”

  Eliza screamed and Levi tried to cover her.

  The giant shadow tarantula shifted its focus to Farragut and lunged. The shotgun and burning cocktail each flared while Farragut shrieked in terror.

  Then something broke thru, and they could clearly hear Chief John and his drum and then as the shadow spider loomed ever larger it suddenly shattered as the internal core of shadow suddenly burst into flame. What looked like a shriveled old man in the center burned up and dozens of tarantulas exploded from its core.

  Eliza screamed and flung them off of her. Levi swatted at them and cursed.

  Chief John however stopped playing his drum.

  “Are you crazy? Why did you stop?”

  “It is over, it is done.”

  “Just like that?” asked Levi, accusingly.

  Chief John nodded. “Yes, he wanted to see if he was greater than I and if he could outlast my power. But I think it was Mr. Farragut’s fire that destroyed the dried mummified body left to Toohoo-emmi.”

  “Toohoo-emmi?”

  “That was his name.”

  “Is it really over?”

  “It is.”

  “But if he plagued Aunt Millie all this time, and all you could do was give her the drum then how? Why now?”

  “I wouldn’t have thought we could burn him like that.”

  “Was he really trapped here? Did we even really need a palm over his grave?”

  “Maybe once, but I truly didn’t know where in the backyard he was buried. Again, it is over and you have your home back and in peace. Another palm might look nice there but you don’t need it.”

  Eliza asked, “How do you know he wanted a body? How did you know we could defeat him tonight? How did you know his name?”

  “Because he was my brother. And I have been waiting for the right time. I never knew until today that it was today. I had worried that in my old age I might run out of time and he would be left to inflict his harm on the inhabitants of this land longer than I could be around. But it is done, the mistakes of the past are finally reconciled in a large part thanks to a terrible man.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Everyone has value, even bad examples. Even the murderous Farragut served a purpose for the greater good.”

  “I don’t like this one bit,” said Levi. Eliza brushed his cheek and tried to calm him.

  “But the home is ours and we are free of that evil?”

  Chief John nodded. “It is done. I wouldn’t tell anyone that you saw a giant shadow tarantula bite Mr. Farragut though. Better tell folks he came over and had a heart attack. Farewell.”

  He walked out into the night and they never spoke to him again.

  “After the horse dance was over, it seemed that I was above the ground and did not touch it when I walked.”

  — Black Elk

  Chief John Rides Again

  Eulogy delivered by Charlie Wisespirit[53] April 6th, 1921 along with some cataloged witness[54] reactions.

  “I say the following not for Old John but for the White Man, that they may know a little more about what kind of man John was and that they may know more of his people and this land that he cared for as a steward, and not a land owner. Old John owns just as much now as he did when he was born, but we are wealthy beyond counting for having had his presence in our lives.

  This is how I will honor him.

  The old ways are dying and none of us can bring them back, they slip through our fingers like the wind. The past is a phantom that we cling to but always comes evening and it disappears like the stars in the dawn, doomed by mornings first light. Yet the dawn too is the future and what it brings tomorrow no man knows.

  I cared for my mother’s elder brother Old John in the last year of his life. He had grown too weak to ride his horses or hunt in the hills. He could not tend his garden or make his own meals, but he was a good man, a wise man and a truer friend I have never known. I will especially miss his sense of humor and playful manner. John was also our medicine man for as long as anyone can remember. He was young but he was the shaman of our tribe when the Mormons first came and he has always looked out for his people. We will never forget him.

  Always he strived to do what was right and his courage was as great as any mans.

  When he was a boy he was kidnapped and sold into slavery by the Shoshone and managed to escape from them. He had been taken far to the southeast but he found his way home through the wide desert. It was there that he became a man and learned to talk to the Great Spirit.

  It was only later as he matured that he said he learned to listen too.”

  [Audience laughed]

  “There are many other stories of John I could relate and some of those many of you will already know. What was important is that he loved his people and did all he could to watch over them and help them become a strong people.

  As I began, the old ways are dying. The tribal elders expect that I will sacrifice my two horses that Old John may ride up to the next world, but I will not.”

  [There was gasp from the audience here, and some few protests from older Paiute elders.]

  “Old John Two-Hawks loved to laugh, he was original, he was different from most men and I will honor him in a new way, a different way that I truly believe he would enjoy.”

  [Mr. Wisespirit then left the makeshift pulpit and went through the gathered crowd to where he had parked his old Model T. The audience with curiosity fully piqued followed. Mr. Wisespirit who had taken up a flaming torch.]

  “In the old ways we would take a living thing like a horse and we would kill it and burn it. So that our departed loved one might have a mount in the afterlife. But I will not kill something Old John loved in this life to give him in the next.”

  [Again several in the crowd jeered or complained at this most unorthodox behavior.]

  “Instead, I will burn this Model T and when all the others come riding up on horses in the next world, Old John will drive up in that Mod
el T and be just as well off as any of them!”

  [With that Mr. Wisespirit took the torch to the car and it went up in a great blaze of belching black smoke and orange flame.]

  “Oh Great Spirit, recognize your son John Two-Hawks and welcome him!”

  [The burning car sparked and crackled as fire jetted over it. And it was reported by witnesses that the powerful winds came up suddenly and caused the flames to grow and expand shimmering much greater than any could have possibly expected.

  Some witnesses claimed this was just a chaotic dust devil that came serendipitously but I doubt it.

  Smoke shifted into the most unusual shape mimicking a great black car and it seemed to swirl about over the top of the heads of the gathered audience in the parking lot. Some witnesses swore they heard a great laughing that sounded just like Old John’s before the black dust devil swirled higher and disappeared just as suddenly as it had arrived.]

  “I see him now! He is driving the car of smoke and spirit up to the next world! He is happy and he wants you to be happy! His work here is done. Thank you Great Spirit.”

  ‡ ‡ ‡

  I can see him now too in my mind’s eye, putting pedal to the metal of a ghostly Model T chasing the specters of the deer and antelope, racing his ancestors and feeling the electric light speed with the changing of worlds. This is not a mockery, this is a celebration of vitality and a rebirth of both the new and the old, together again in that eternal cycle of life from one plane to another. There is no end, but sometimes we can pick how we get there.

  And Old John is still laughing somewhere on the highway to Heaven behind the wheel of a spectral Model T Runabout.

  “All those persons interred within the St. Thomas semitary shall be forthwith removed, exhumed and transported to a new semitary located within Overton, Nevada, that shall be known as the Lake Mead Semitary. There will be no survivors.”

  — Arthur Wraxell: Rioville Gazette May 1934

  Wisp of a Thing

  Stanza by Anonymous: December 1934

  I saw a wisp of a thing in St. Thomas town

  Kingly it was, though it bore no crown

  Dark and majestic, both sad and proud

  I was taken aback to see that it wore a shroud

  For though I work with the living and the dead

  It bodes not well to hear what the latter has said

  I will rise again and again and again it cried

  And in my fear and shock my heart almost died

  Do not call up what you cannot put down

  For the spirit of this place may drink deep and drown

  But the call of its heart will beat on and sound

  Until all who walk over will feel this ground

  Shake and tumble, explode and roar

  Til the dead come and walk once more.

  “Of all ghosts, the ghosts of our old loves are the worst.”

  — Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

  There was a Woman Dwelt by a Graveyard

  The statement of Donald Wagner: May 25th, 1935

  “In the months prior to Lake Mead flooding my old homestead I was given much to driving back and forth between the new and the old place. I was hiring day laborers to help with my move and ranching and such, I’m not as young as I used to be and the ranch needs a lot of work beyond my years and strength.

  As you know very well, one of the laborers I picked up was an older feller, name of Thomas Bickersham who grew up around here he says and has been gone since he was a young’un. I do not recall any family by that name in these here parts, but he was a good hard worker. He knew the lay of the land so has definitely spent some time here before, even if that is not his Christian name.

  On the first day of Mr. Bickersham’s help we were passing by the old graveyard of St. Thomas, all of the graves having been removed to the new in Overton and we both saw a woman standing there in the morning and again at twilight.

  It was hard to see her exact features but she had a long grey dress and long dark hair that was flying in the wind quite unkempt and wild, though I don’t recall there being any wind that day when we stopped the truck later.

  We saw her again the next day both in the early morning light and the gloomy twilight of evening. Mr. Bickersham seemed especially unnerved though I was not sure as to why exactly. He claimed it was for shore not anyone he had ever known nor spoken too. I suspected he may have been a bad liar but he was still a good ranch hand. So I didn’t worry.

  I seemed to recall a tale told of a woman who dwelt by the graveyard for the last few odd years and I had never paid it no mind. But having seen her for myself now I did wonder at why she was there and what she was doing in that lonely place. Some of my other hands had spoken of seeing her before and to tales relating to this heartbreak or that and even perhaps that she was a lost soul from when the town had seen wilder days. Some others said a ghost but I thought not as her dress did not look as old as that, nor did I believe I have ever seen a ghost either.

  She did not look like a spook to me.

  And on the third day we again saw the woman in the graveyard. I found it especially strange as I am shore that there are no more graves there, all of them having been moved on to Overton’s new Mead Lake Cemetery[55] by the last couple months or so. There is no good reason that the woman should be spending so much time in such a place that the federals claim will be under water in a few more months. When I looked in the rearview mirror I could not see her anymore and I wondered to where she had gone. Saying as much to Bickersham only made him cringe and he looked nervously out the rear window, admitting that he was afraid of spooks.

  But I said I didn’t believe in spooks and told Bickersham that I meant to talk to the woman if she was indeed there as we would pass by that evening. Bickersham said that was fine, but as evening came on and our work was nearly done, he made excuse after excuse to not go with me back to the homestead and thereby have to go past the graveyard. I said fine and left him to make out for himself over night at the new ranch.

  As I drove closer to the old graveyard I did not see the woman and was quite perplexed as I had fully expected to see her again after so much routine. But I did stop the truck and take a look around to sate my own curiosity on the matter. It was getting dark and I found no sign of any person being there save for the marks where the old graves had been exhumed.

  It was then that I realized that the woman I had seen on those previous occasions had not been in the graveyard proper but right outside the boundaries of same. I walked to that place and saw that the ground there was somewhat sunken and denoted the possibility of that being another grave outside of the proper accounting of same and that it had been missed.

  I then wondered if she was indeed a spook and I alone was privy to her sorrow and struggle at being left behind and that she was in mourning to having been forgotten and that soon enough her unattended and forgotten grave would be under the waters of Lake Mead forever more. This and the sunset made me wax more poetic than usual and I smiled to myself.

  I then drove on home thinking I would inquire with Old Man Perkins about the possibility of a missed grave and whether there was anything more to the woman in the graveyard story dating back to the pioneers.

  That night I slept fitful like. I was roused multiple times thinking I had heard screams but when I woke there was no sound but the crickets and even then they weren’t too loud. In my mind’s eye I thought I saw the woman’s face, even though I had ever got a good look at it afore. I also thought I saw Bickersham’s leering face and it made me uneasy.

  Next morning I was called away on account of a broken fence and rather than drive all the way back out to the south forty to get Bickersham, I went and fixed the fence myself.

  When I stopped at Gentry’s I saw Old Man Perkins there as I have told you earlier, and I asked about the grey woman.

  He said that he had heard about her for some few years but that it was only that—years, like about forty he said, no longer. Folks only sta
rted seeing the spook when he was about twenty five he said. Some suspected that it was the spook of Molly Trager but then no one knew why she would haunt anyone.

  More likely he said it was the Calico gal from Rioville who had come up on one of the last steamships and plied her trade her for a few months, then one night she just disappeared, most everyone figured she had just used up the town and moved on, but it wasn’t long after that, that folks started to see the grey woman at the graveyard.

  Funny thing was he told me, that nobody ever saw her with another witness, they were always alone. I explained that both Bickersham and I had both seen her together several morning and evenings in a row and that Bickersham always had quite a fright for it.

  His eyes raised at that and he enquired as to who this Bickersham was. I replied that he was my hired help for the summer and that I had my suspicions of him but nothing solid. Old Man Perkins needed something to do beyond play cards with the Garvy boys so he rode along with me.

  We stopped at the old cemetery and I showed him the spot where I had seen the grey woman and he agreed that it looked suspect. Being that it was right outside of the graveyard there weren’t no law to prevent us from taking a look. I took the shovels from out of the back of my truck and we dug into the rocky ground.

  Not even two feet down and we found it. Bones and a grey dress, the very same faded ash grey that I had seen the woman wearing. Strangely, the ring finger on her left hand had a gold wedding band? But Old Man Perkins was near to sure that it was indeed the Calico gal.

  We then promptly drove back to tell you [Sheriff Warner] and alert the other county authorities. They come and claimed the remains and only then did I head back toward the ranch house.

  It was nigh on dusk when I found myself driving on back to the new ranch. I guessed that the mystery was solved and that now that the Calico gal’s body had been found she could be laid to rest proper with the others from the graveyard and not worry over her grave being forgot and left to flood over.