by Jon Sharpe
“What could it have been?” Lieutenant Wright asked.
“A man,” Fargo replied. “Had to be.”
“It wasn’t entirely human,” Wright said.
“Bullshit.” Fargo was using that word a lot lately. “There’s nothing else it could have been.”
“I’m glad my men didn’t hear it,” Wright said, glancing at the other two cabins with lit windows farther off. “Some of them already think this place is haunted.”
“A haunted gulch?” Fargo said. “How stupid are they?”
“Why not? There are haunted houses. I once heard of a haunted barn. And Private Benjamin tells me he lived near a haunted hill when he was growing up.”
“Are you sure you went to West Point?”
“Scoff if you must,” Wright said indignantly. “I’m only letting you know how some of the men feel.”
“It’s not as far-fetched as it sounds,” Bear River Tom said.
“Not you too?” Fargo said.
“You know yourself that there are places the Indians won’t go near. Bad medicine, they call them. Which is the same as saying they’re haunted.”
“I don’t believe in ghosts,” Fargo said.
“Who said it has to be the spirits of the dead?” Bear River Tom said. “It could be something else.”
“Not that again. And I thought I knew you.”
“You’re too close minded, pard,” Bear River Tom said. “You’re as close minded about haunts as you are about tits.”
“I don’t want to hear any more haunt talk,” Fargo told them. “It’s silly even to bring it up.”
“Could be you’re right,” Lieutenant Wright said. “But then, what’s that?” And he pointed across the stream.
Fargo turned and felt his blood chill.
Above the far bank, something white was silhouetted against the night-shrouded pines and junipers. Vague and wavering, it was almost as wide as it was tall. As they looked on, the thing seemed to glide back into the trees and disappear.
“A ghost!” Bear River Tom exclaimed.
“Like hell.” Fargo ran to the stream and waded out. The water came only as high as his shins. The gravel underfoot was slippery but he made it across without slipping and clambered up the bank.
Silence gripped the forest, a silence so complete as to be unnatural.
Fargo crept a few yards in, and hunkered. Loud splashing let him know the others had followed, and in moments they were crouched on either side, the lieutenant breathing much more heavily than the short exertion called for.
“Where did it get to?” he nervously whispered.
“How should I know?” Fargo said.
“It vanished,” Bear River Tom said. “That’s what haunts do.”
“Enough of that nonsense,” Fargo snapped. “Come morning we’ll look for sign.”
“And if we don’t find any?” Tom said. “Will you be willing to admit you’re wrong about spooks and such?”
“No,” Fargo said. “I’ll be pissed.”
At dawn he was up and recrossed the stream before he had his first cup of coffee. He searched for half an hour but the carpet of pine needles was undisturbed.
“Well?” Bear River Tom asked when he opened the cabin door. “What was that white thing?”
“What it wasn’t,” Fargo said, “was a spook.” He looked around. “Where’s the lieutenant?”
“Soldier boy went to rouse the other boys in blue,” Tom answered as he filled a cup with steaming coffee.
Fargo was all set to pour his own when the cabin door opened again.
“You need to come with me,” Lieutenant Wright said anxiously. “You need to come right this second.”
Fargo swore when he saw the troopers clustered at the horse string. Fearing for the Ovaro, he shoved through them and almost tripped over what they were staring at.
“We can’t find a mark on it,” Private Davenport said. “Not so much as a scratch.”
A packhorse lay on its side, its eyes wide, as dead as anything. Its legs jutted straight, its tongue lolled. Flies were already gathering, and one crawled out of its mouth and took wing.
“It’s still tied to the rope,” a trooper said.
All the horses were in a string, a safeguard to prevent hostiles from stealing them. The smell of death had them skittish.
“Cut the others loose,” Fargo commanded as he sank down next to the dead one. He roved his hands over its head, its neck, its back, its belly. Private Davenport was right—there wasn’t a mark to be found.
“Maybe it’s on the other side,” Lieutenant Wright suggested. He ordered his men to roll the packhorse over.
After a lot of puffing and grunting, they succeeded.
Fargo bent to find the cause of death.
“Nothing,” Bear River Tom said after they’d looked. “It’s as if it keeled over for no reason.”
“Could it have died of old age?” Lieutenant Wright asked. “Or was it sick?”
“No, and no,” Fargo said. The sorrel was in its prime and as healthy as, well, a horse.
“Then what killed it?” another soldier said.
“I told you this place is haunted,” a private by the name of Benjamin declared. “Now maybe all of you will believe me.”
Fargo had never heard anything so ridiculous in his life. Then again, there was that white thing the night before, and now a packhorse dropped dead for no earthly reason.
What the hell was going on?
16
Fargo spent most of the day in the saddle. He roved a mile up the stream to near the end of the gulch but didn’t go all the way.
Tracks were conspicuous by their absence. He found a lot of old ones in and around the settlement but not a single one past the first bend.
He scoured the opposite side and discovered deer tracks and coon tracks and possum tracks and the paw prints of a gray fox and two sets of coyote tracks. But nothing that would shed light on why the settlers vanished or explain the white thing or what killed the packhorse.
The sun was about to relinquish its rule when Fargo reined the weary Ovaro toward the settlement. He was as determined as ever to get to the bottom of the disappearances but it would have to wait for the new day.
The aroma of roasting venison made his stomach growl. Bear River Tom had shot a doe and her haunch was on a spit over a crackling fire.
“No need to tell me how it went, pard. I can tell by your face.”
Fargo was in no mood for small talk. He nursed a cup of coffee and wished he had whiskey to add. No sooner did the desire cross his mind than Lieutenant Wright walked up and flourished a half-empty whiskey bottle.
“Look at what Private Davenport found.”
Fargo snatched it and opened it and took a swig.
“Here now,” Lieutenant Wright said. “You’re not setting a good example for the men.”
“That’s your job,” Fargo said, and wiped his mouth with his sleeve.
“I’ve had them start an inventory,” Wright reported, “and what they haven’t found is more revealing than what they have.”
“Besides no bodies?” Bear River Tom said.
Wright paid him no mind. “They haven’t found any money. No pokes, no purses, no bills, no coins.”
“So much for your spooks,” Fargo said.
“You saw a ghost with your own eyes and you refuse to admit it,” Bear River Tom said.
“That thing last night was no ghost.”
“When something looks like a duck and quacks like a duck it’s a by-the-Almighty duck.”
“Maybe it will come back tonight,” Fargo hoped, “and we’ll put it to the test.”
“How do you test a ghost?” Lieutenant Wright asked.
“With lead,” Fargo said, patting his Colt.
“You’re going to shoot a spook?” Bear River Tom laughed. “When it doesn’t drop dead, will you admit we’re right?”
“No.”
“God, you’re stubborn,” Tom said. “But now you have me hoping it comes back, too.”
The troopers came and sat waiting for their evening meal. They were quiet and on edge and cast repeated glances into the gathering gloom of night.
Stars sparkled, and multiplied. A coyote gave voice to the yips of its breed. Not long after, up in the mountains, a bear roared.
Fargo was on his third cup of coffee when Tom announced it was time to eat. In addition to the venison, Tom had made biscuits. They were lumpy and twice the size a biscuit should be but they tasted right fine.
“You’re not a bad cook,” Lieutenant Wright commented, sounding surprised.
“When a man is on the trail as much as I am and has to fill his own belly,” Bear River Tom said, “he learns a few tricks.”
Fargo made the mistake of saying, “I’d like to know the trick of killing a horse without leaving a mark.”
“That’s easy,” Private Davenport spoke up. “It died of fright.”
Private Benjamin nodded. “From seeing that spook that’s hanging around.”
A third trooper threw in, “Even people can drop dead when they’re scared enough. Their heart just stops.”
“Enough of that kind of talk,” Lieutenant Wright said sternly. “I’m not saying I believe this spook business and I’m not saying I don’t. But we will conduct ourselves as soldiers whether there are ghosts or not.”
“For the last goddamn time,” Fargo said, “there are no such things.”
As if to prove him wrong, the wind picked up and a moan filled the air, rising in volume and seeming to come from all directions at once. The same kind of moan as the night before.
Private Benjamin shot to his feet, exclaiming, “Do you hear that?”
Fargo had to admit it was unnerving. The short hairs on his neck prickled as he swiveled to try to pinpoint where it was coming from.
“Steady, men,” Lieutenant Wright said. “Benjamin, sit back down and act your age.”
Bear River Tom was frozen with a biscuit halfway to his mouth. “I ain’t ever heard the like.”
The moan ended as suddenly as it started, and in the silence that fell, Fargo could have heard a pebble drop.
“I vote we head back to Fort Laramie, sir,” Private Benjamin said.
“When did this become a democracy?” Lieutenant Wright countered. “We’ve been given a mission by our commanding officer and we’ll carry it out to the best of our ability.”
“We can’t fight ghosts, sir,” a trooper said.
“I don’t want to hear any more about it,” Wright said. “That moan could just as well have come from a human throat.”
For once Fargo and the young officer were in agreement. “Post a guard at the horses when we’re done eating. We don’t want a repeat of last night.”
“Already done,” Wright said.
“Pard?” Bear River Tom said, sounding strained.
“If it’s ghosts or tits I don’t want to hear it,” Fargo said.
Tom pointed. “Then I won’t say it’s back.”
Fargo turned and his neck prickled for a second time.
Across the stream in the pines, something white fluttered toward them.
17
Damned if Private Benjamin didn’t scream.
Fargo dropped his cup and his plate and was up and running. He didn’t think to grab the Henry but he had his Colt and that should be enough. Palming it, he reached the stream to find a deep pool blocked his way. He should go around but it would waste precious time. In he plunged, forcing against the water as it rose past his shins and his knees almost to his waist.
“Pard, wait!” Bear River Tom hollered.
Fargo wasn’t about to. He could end the ghost nonsense once and for all.
The white thing had stopped and appeared to be hovering.
Fargo was almost halfway across, and fired. Nothing happened. The thing went on fluttering. He stopped and took aim and put two more slugs into the middle of whatever it was.
Just like that, the thing vanished. One moment it was there, the next it wasn’t.
Moving as fast as he could, spraying water every which way, Fargo gained the other side. He was in the trees not thirty seconds after the thing vanished and it was nowhere to be seen. The only sounds were his heavy breathing and the pounding of boots and moccasins as the troopers and Bear River Tom hurried to reach him.
Fargo went farther in. The thing had to be there somewhere.
“Pard? Pard?” Bear River Tom, for all his bulk, was fleeter than the soldiers half his age. He reached Fargo’s side and breathlessly scanned the woods. “What was it? Where did it get to?”
“I wish to hell I knew,” Fargo growled.
“You hit it, didn’t you?”
“Dead center.”
“You know what that means, don’t you?”
“Like hell it does.”
Fargo roved in a circle that brought him back to the stream and the waiting troopers.
“You don’t need to tell me if you found anything,” Lieutenant Wright said.
“I saw it, sir, and I don’t believe what I saw,” Private Davenport said.
“What’s the matter with all of you?” Private Benjamin said. “It’s a spook of some kind. It has to be.”
“I told you to stop with that kind of talk,” Lieutenant Wright snapped.
“You saw it, sir,” Benjamin persisted. “Did it look like a man to you? No. There was nothing human about it. It’s a spook, I tell you. Some kind of thing from the other side.”
“You try my patience, Private,” Lieutenant Wright said. “Honest to God you do.”
Fargo might have stood there longer, probing the woods, except he realized that they’d left their mounts and the remaining pack animal untended. “We have to get back.”
“Shouldn’t we conduct a search?” Lieutenant Wright asked.
“The horses, damn it.”
Wright gave a start and ordered his men to recross at the double.
To Fargo’s relief, the Ovaro and the other animals were perfectly fine. The dead one had been dragged off far enough that it wouldn’t bring scavengers into the settlement, and to spare them from the reek when it began to rot.
Back at the fire, Fargo refilled his tin cup and hunkered.
“Well, that was exciting,” Bear River Tom said.
“I should post men on the other side of the stream,” Lieutenant Wright proposed. “They can alert us if the thing returns.”
“Or have their throats slit in the middle of the night like that man yesterday,” Fargo said.
“Which reminds me,” Lieutenant Wright said. “We’re so caught up with this spook, we’ve forgotten why we’re here.”
“I haven’t,” Fargo said.
Wright gestured at the empty cabins and tents. “Where can they be? How can so many people disappear without a trace?”
“The spook got them,” Private Benjamin said.
Lieutenant Wright put his hands on his hips and glared. “Enough. So help me, if you bring it up again, when we get back to the fort I’ll bring you up on a charge of insubordination.”
Fargo was pleased to see Wright show some backbone. But it didn’t go over well with the other troopers.
“Anyone else want to disobey an order?” Wright addressed them. “I will have discipline, gentlemen. Whether you like it or not.”
“You sound like my father, sir,” Private Davenport remarked.
“I thank you for the compliment.”
“It wasn’t intended to be, sir,” Private Davenport said.
“If you don’t like taking orders,” Lie
utenant Wright said, “you picked a damn poor profession.”
Their petty squabbling was getting to Fargo. He stood and carried his cup around the cabin to where he could see the wall of forest on the other side of the stream. He wasn’t alone long.
“These pups have a lot to learn,” Bear River Tom grumbled.
Fargo grunted and sipped.
“How about if I go with you tomorrow? I told you before, I’m not cut out to be a nursemaid.”
“As fond as you are of tits?” Fargo joked.
“Go to hell. You probably won’t believe it but I haven’t thought about tits all day.”
Fargo looked up at the sky and then at the settlement and at the ground at their feet.
“What?” Bear River Tom said.
“I’m waiting for the world to end.”
“I do have days when I don’t, you know.”
“Who are you and what have you done with the real Bear River Tom?”
“Go to hell twice. I’m not so—” Tom stopped.
From the settlement behind them rose a piercing shriek of terror.
18
Private Benjamin stood with his fly open and his hand in his pants. His mouth was open, too, and he was shrieking at the top of his lungs. He might have gone on shrieking had Fargo not run up and smacked him across the face.
Lieutenant Wright and the others got there moments later, the lieutenant holding a burning brand over his head to cast light. “What in the world got into you?” he demanded.
Private Benjamin pointed and his mouth worked a couple of times before he gasped, “Don’t you see it? I had to take a piss and I came over and there it was.”
Fargo had already seen, and an icy shiver ran down his spine.
“It’s not possible,” Bear River Tom said.
They had buried the man with the slit throat in a shallow grave and covered the mound with rocks to keep the wild things from digging it up. But now the rocks had been scattered and the dirt strewn about, and where the body should be was an empty hole.
Lieutenant Wright knelt and reached in and stated the obvious. “The body’s gone.”
“Who could have done this, sir?” a trooper asked, ripe with fear.