In Indian file, they trudged into the gloomy lobby. There were several oil-lamps and Larry investigated them at once, discovered they were useable.
“Fortuna,” he remarked, as he scratched a match, “ain’t so dead after all.”
He got every lamp working, flooding the lobby with yellow light. They stood inside the doorway, thoughtfully surveying the circular seat in the center, the reception desk and mail rack to the right, the staircase to the left and the doorway leading into a rear passage. Larry handed a lamp to Tom.
“You and Mr. Newbold,” he ordered, “take a look out back.”
Gingerly, Tom accepted the lamp and crooked a finger at the small man. They crossed the lobby and entered the passage. Sarah Ann went to the reception desk and made a discovery.
“Look! A letter—and it’s addressed to us!”
“Impossible!” snorted Lavinia.
“Well,” shrugged Sarah Ann, “not exactly to us. See what’s written on the envelope?”
She handed it to Larry, who examined it with Stretch peering over his shoulder. In a shaky hand had been scribbled the two words:
“TO ANYBODY.”
“How about that?” blinked Stretch. “Whoever writ this here letter, he wanted to be sure somebody would read it.” Thudding footsteps along the rear passage heralded the return of Tom and Theodore. The old man nodded reassuringly, and announced, “We found a well in the yard.”
“Plenty water,” frowned Tom, “and a bucket that don’t leak. Everything workin’ slick—like somebody’s usin’ it all the time.”
“This place,” opined Theodore, “can’t be uninhabited.”
“I guess,” sighed Tom, “even a ghost gets thirsty.”
“No ghost triggered those shots,” countered Larry. He tore the flap of the envelope, extracted the single sheet and examined the writing. Obviously, their unknown correspondent had penned this note in haste. His scrawl was almost illegible. “Darned if I can make sense of this.”
“Let me try,” offered Sarah Ann.
He returned it to her. She stood close by a lamp and read aloud:
“TO ANY TRAVELLER WHO SHARES MY MISFORTUNE—THE MISFORTUNE OF SEEKING SANCTUARY IN THIS TERRIBLE PLACE ...”
She broke off, matched stares with Larry. Harriet shuddered, and murmured, “They mean this place!”
“Read on,” Larry ordered the youngest sister. “Maybe he found a cache of canned food, and figured to tip us off.” She continued reading:
“IF YOU VALUE YOUR LIFE, DON’T STAY IN FORTUNA. THIS IS AN EVIL PLACE, AND I WOULD RATHER DIE IN THE DESERT THAN SPEND ANOTHER MINUTE HERE. I HAVE SEEN TOO MUCH THAT CAN’T BE EXPLAINED—THINGS BEYOND THE COMPREHENSION OF MORTAL MAN. IT IS CERTAIN THAT THIS DEAD TOWN IS HAUNTED BY THE SPIRITS OF THOSE WHO LIVED AND DIED HERE. TO PRESERVE YOUR SANITY, DO AS I AM DOING. LEAVE AT ONCE.
SIGNED—NATHANIEL COLWELL.”
Bart said, quietly, “It’s no trick-letter, if he signed his own name. Chances are he got a bad scare and wanted to warn anybody else that happened by.”
“That’s how it adds up,” Larry agreed.
“Well—good heavens,” frowned Elmira, “we can’t stay here!”
“It’s a roof over our heads, lady,” growled Larry. “It’s a place to shelter from the weather, and maybe catch a night’s sleep. So we’re stayin’.”
“But—that letter ...!” fretted Tom.
“Colwell was probably a mighty nervous jasper,” said Larry. “Somethin’ scared him, so he turned leery and made a run for it. What matters is whether he had any right to be scared. He could’ve been the kind that jumps at shadows.”
“Well ...” began Bart.
“I’m hungry,” said Harriet, bluntly.
“Sure,” nodded Larry. “We’re all hungry, and we know somebody lives here.”
“Meanin’,” frowned Stretch, “the sharpshooter that took a shot at us.”
“Meanin’ him,” said Larry. “He has to eat. It’s my hunch he’s got a cache of provisions stashed somewhere in this burg. All right—that’s our first chore. We have to find that cache. We know he ain’t friendly, so it’s no use expectin’ him to feed us of his own freewill. We have to find his cache and help ourselves. Any arguments?”
“Fair enough,” grinned Bart. “I was never so all-fired hungry in my whole life.”
“I’m going upstairs,” announced Sarah Ann, “and try to find a room with a soft bed.”
“Wait, child ...” began Theodore.
But the impulsive Sarah Ann was already halfway up the stairs, and pausing, recoiling, covering her face with her hands. Instinctively, Lavinia hustled to the bottom of the staircase and stared upward. Her strident scream caused Tom to start convulsively and started the Texans running across to her. They nudged her aside and bounded up the stairs. Stretch wrapped an arm about Sarah Ann’s quivering shoulders, while Larry moved on.
The figure was only dimly visible—just the bottom part dangling—the feet suspended some inches above the level of the upstairs corridor. He climbed on slowly, while Stretch did his best to calm the trembling girl. A rope, Larry perceived, had been thrown over a beam. One end was secured to the gallery rail. From the other end—the noose-end—hung the “body”, a cunningly-fashioned dummy. He cursed luridly, called a reassurance to the others. The razor-sharp blade of his Bowie slashed through the rope and the dummy flopped. He lifted it and let it fall into the lobby. Then, as the others gathered about it, he descended the stairs.
“I was so sure!” gasped Sarah Ann. “I mean—it looked so real ...!”
“You don’t have to apologize,” muttered Larry. He stood beside Stretch and subjected the dummy to a pensive scrutiny. “It looks like our ghost is doin’ his damnedest.”
On closer examination, the dummy proved to be well constructed. Their reluctant host had stuffed straw into a shirt and britches, packing the straw about a rough skeleton of sapling rods and securing the boots with rawhide. The head was a sizeable knob sawn from the top of a stair-post.
“You know what we gotta do, runt?” challenged Stretch. “We gotta search this doggone hotel, make sure it’s safe.”
“Sure enough,” agreed Larry. “That’s our first chore.”
“We should split up,” Bart suggested, “and check every room.”
“The women,” opined Larry, “ought to stay downstairs.”
“Not likely,” countered Sarah Ann.
“Surely we’ll all be safer,” murmured Elmira, “if we stay together.”
“All right, all right,” Larry shrugged impatiently. “Let’s get on with it. Stretch, you ride herd on Miss Elmira and her ma. Mr. Newbold, you take Miss Harriet and start checkin’ the rooms on the south side of the gallery. Bart, you take Sarah Ann and head for the top floor.”
“Wh-what about m-m-me?” blinked Tom.
“You’ll be safe enough on your lonesome,” Larry assured him. “I’ll be close by. If anything fazes you, all you have to do is holler.” He nodded to the stairs. “C’mon now. The sooner we get started, the sooner we can settle in.”
And so it began. Every minute of the next half-hour was fraught with tension and apprehension for the frightened women and the grim-faced men.
Along the gallery, Stretch, Lavinia and Elmira were investigating a large bedroom. It contained two sizeable beds, four chairs and a sofa, and there were two closets. To the door of one closet had been tacked a card, inscribed “Danger”. Understandably, Elmira edged away from that door and opened the other—and her anguished scream brought Stretch to her side at lightning speed. Lavinia added her own vocal power to her daughter’s, as the Texan’s Colt began booming, filling the room with its deafening roar. There were three familiar threats in that closet, reptiles of a type well known to the case-hardened Stretch—rattlesnakes, aroused and deadly.
By the time Larry and the others came dashing into the room, Stretch was toting the dead snakes to the window and hurling them out.
“Rattlers,” he
cheerfully informed Larry. “Three of ’em—in the closet.”
“Hell’s bells!” gasped Tom.
Larry opened the closet marked “Danger”. No snakes in there. He stifled an oath, then glanced about the room and asserted, “This’ll do fine for the women—if we’re sure that fool ghost hasn’t planted any scorpions under the pillows.”
“No,” grunted Stretch. “I reckon the beds are safe enough.”
To prove this assertion, he seated himself on a mattress—and immediately leapt up again, yelling like a banshee and rubbing at his behind. Larry went to the bed, checked the mattress, then flopped to his knees and felt beneath.
“I’m wounded!” Stretch loudly complained.
“You’ll heal,” Larry promised, “just so long as you don't squat on any more knife-blades.” He disengaged the jack-knife and exhibited it for the shocked inspection of his companions. “It was shoved up through the mattress.”
“I’ll massacree him!” raged Stretch. “When I get my paws on that crazy spook, I’ll kick his spine up through his hat!”
“Stay with the women,” ordered Larry. “Check the mattresses careful, while I take a look at the other rooms.”
A few moments later, Tom Shackley gingerly entered another bedroom. Visibility was dim, because the window shade was down. He felt his way to it, tugged at the cord and began raising it. Light filtered into the room and, simultaneously, he heard a slight, rumbling sound. He swallowed a lump in his throat, blinked apprehensively over his shoulder—and saw the hideous figure moving towards him—slowly, steadily. His scalp crawled.
The figure was the figure of a woman, garbed in a tattered gown. The head was sheer horror, the face a terrifying caricature. Instead of a mouth, he saw an open beak, and the eyes were unnaturally small. Yet, perched atop that face was a lacy, filthy bonnet. He cringed against the window, still clutching the cord of the shade, and the figure advanced close enough for him to touch it. At last he found his voice and, split seconds after his frantic cry, Larry appeared in the open doorway, gun in hand.
“Get it—get it away from me!” yelled Tom.
Larry sighed heavily, hammered down and holstered his Colt.
“All right,” he growled. “Let go that doggone string.”
Tom released the cord, quickly stepped away from the figure. Larry ambled into the room, stood beside him and gave the “apparition” a thorough once-over. It took him only a few moments to establish that the ugly head was the head of a buzzard, stuffed by some amateur taxidermist and affixed to the top of a dressmaker’s dummy. The dummy stood on a platform, which moved on small wheels. With infinite cunning, the unknown had secured a length of cord to the roller of the window-shade, with its other end tied to the dummy’s base. The action of raising the shade caused the dummy to roll towards the window from its original position in a nearby corner.
“Just a fool trick.” He summed it up for Tom, as he detached the bonneted head and tossed it out the window. ‘The kind of thing that would scare the innards out of any lily-livered coward.”
“I ain’t ashamed,” groaned Tom. “Go ahead, Larry. Call me a lily-livered coward.”
“You’re no coward,” agreed Larry. “Trouble with you s you’re so doggone superstitious.” He shook a finger under Tom’s nose. “Always remember—there’s an explanation for everything ”
“I wish I could believe ...” began Tom.
“No matter how bad it looks,” stressed Larry, “and no matter how damn mysterious—there has to be a human explanation. This town ain’t haunted, Tom. It’s rigged with booby-traps, but it ain’t haunted.”
“L-l-let’s get outa here,” faltered Tom.
“I’m goin’,” said Larry. “You’re stayin’. Only way you can get rid of this fear is to face up to it. You check every inch of this room, savvy?”
“Aw, hell,” groaned Tom Shackley.
The dark of night was settling upon Fortuna, when the nine travelers finally reassembled in the lobby. They had checked every room of the hotel, including the kitchen, and found other booby-traps, other cunningly-contrived obstructions, but none to compare with the hanging “body”, the dummy with the face of a buzzard, or the closet containing three live rattlesnakes. Lavinia found a human skull in a dresser drawer. Harriet found a note tacked to the back of a chair. It warned all and sundry to “flea wile you can”, and was signed “The Gost of Davy Crockitt”. And there were other discouragements, too comical to deter the Texans or the hard-headed Bart Darrance, but more than enough to worry Tom and the women.
In the lobby, they heatedly debated the situation, until Larry gruffly silenced them and offered his theory. He spoke tersely and firmly, the while he rolled and lit a cigarette.
“Here’s the set-up, plain and simple. We’ve found us a place to bunk. Some fool is tryin’ to scare us off, but it won’t work. We’re here and we’re stayin’—at least till tomorrow mornin’. We’ve found water and, pretty soon, we’ll find food. When I say food, I mean whatever provisions have been hoarded by the old desert-rat that tried to scare us off.”
“You figure just one man is behind all this spook-stuff, Larry?” frowned Bart.
“And you call him an old desert-rat?” prodded Theodore.
“How can you be so sure about him,” wondered Sarah Ann, “when you haven’t even seen him?”
“It’s just what I’d expect of an old-time prospector,” Larry explained. “Some old fossicker who made his home in Fortuna. He doesn’t crave company, doesn’t trust people So, any time a stranger comes driftin’ in, our ghost starts plaguin’ him with his crazy laughin’ and wild shootin’ and spook tricks.”
“Well ...” Tom grimaced uneasily, “that’s your story.”
“Come to think of it,” frowned Bart, “I’ve known many a prospector was touched in the head. Wouldn’t surprise me if Larry was dead right.” He eyed Larry expectantly. “So what’s our next move?”
“We leave the women here,” said Larry. “I reckon they’ll be safe enough, if they stay right here in the lobby.”
“You wouldn’t leave us alone ...?” began Elmira. “Your father will set guard at the rear door,” said Larry. He passed his Winchester to the old man. “Okay by you, Mr. Newbold? If you need us, all you have to do is trigger a shot.”
“I’d be glad to cooperate, Mr. Valentine,” muttered Theodore.
“I don’t know how long we’ll be gone,” said Larry. “We’ll be back as soon as we’ve found safe shelter and feed for our horses—and provisions for ourselves.”
Chapter Six
Who Served Supper?
Some eighty yards farther along the silent street, the drifters came to another empty barn. The roof and walls seemed fairly secure and the stalls reasonably comfortable. There was straw aplenty and, in a corner, a half-empty sack of feed. While Larry led the horses in and off-saddled them, Stretch found a pail and hustled away to fetch water. Bart and Tom lingered by the entrance, watching Larry and offering their comments.
“It surely is a ghost town,” mumbled Tom. “Speakin’ for myself, I’ll be a sight happier when Fortuna is a long ways behind us.”
“Who wants to spend all night walking the desert?” countered Bart. “Not this child. I’ll settle for a night’s sleep on a hardwood floor, with a roof over my head and no sand in my mouth. Fortuna is better than the wide open.”
“Well …” shrugged Tom.
“Besides,” said Bart, “we have to think of the women.”
“Quite a problem, those females,” drawled Larry. “But for them, we could take our chances of reachin’ Vine City with just two horses and all the water we can carry.”
“I keep thinkin’ of the rig, and all that baggage,” growled Tom, “back there by the dried out waterhole. And Elrigg and his lousy sidekicks—ridin’ our team-horses.”
“If I live to be a hundred,” muttered Bart, “I’ll even my score with that bunch.”
Stretch returned with the water and they looked to t
he comfort of the sorrel and the pinto while, in the hotel lobby, Lavinia and her daughters suddenly exchanged glances. A sound had reached them, a thudding, clumping sound, from out front. The elder sisters tensed, but Sarah Ann shrugged unconcernedly, and opined:
“It’s only the horses.”
“No,” groaned Lavinia. “They said they’d find a stable for the horses.”
The sound was repeated. Sarah Ann rose from her seat. “Only one animal out there,” she declared.
She strode purposefully to the entrance and, after a moment of hesitation, her mother and sisters followed. Crowding the doorway, they stared out at the animal standing on the porch, an ugly but placid-looking burro of indeterminate vintage. It came closer to the doorway, pricking its ears and returning their stares with interest. Lavinia snorted in disgust.
“A mule.”
“A burro,” Sarah Ann corrected. “There’s quite a difference.”
“How did it get here?” wondered Harriet.
“I guess it only now arrived,” shrugged Elmira.
“Maybe it’s been here all the time,” mused Sarah Ann. “Maybe it belongs to the man Larry spoke of—the old prospector who lives here.”
“There’s nothing human here,” Elmira shuddered disdainfully, “except us. There are ghosts and—and all kinds of evil things ...”
“There you go again,” jibed Sarah Ann, “with your talk of phantoms and evil spirits.”
“Don’t sneer at your sister, child,” frowned Lavinia. “It is unbecoming for the youngest daughter to show such disrespect.”
“She’s jealous,” sneered Harriet, “because Elmira is to be married. She wishes it could be her.”
“Be quiet, Harriet!” snapped Lavinia.
“I’m not jealous.” Sarah Ann showed them a wry smile. “Elmira is welcome to Orin Jaekle. I’d settle for a man like Bart Darrance.”
“Sarah Ann Newbold!” fumed Lavinia. “Have you no shame?”
Her voice had soared to full volume, startling the burro. It flinched and retreated from the porch. Sarah Ann shrugged resignedly, and suggested:
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