Barjack and the Unwelcome Ghost

by Robert J Conley

  We fooled around like that for about another couple a’ hours, and ole Happy, he allowed as how he had ought to get his ass down to the stable to relieve ole Butcher, and then he left, but he were back right quick. He come a-running in. He had done run by Doc’s, on account a’ he went in the stable and found Butcher laid out on the floor. Well, all of us follered him back to the stable. We found Doc there with Butcher, kneeling over him there where he was stretched out on the floor.

  “How is he, Doc?” I blurted out.

  “Hell, Barjack,” he said, “I just got here.”

  “Give him time,” someone said.

  I paced the floor puffing on my cee-gar.

  “He’s just been banged on the head,” the doc said. “He’ll be all right.”

  “He’s got a damn hard head all right,” I said.

  Butcher moaned, and he tried to sit up.

  “What happened, Butcher?” I said.

  “I was going up the ladder,” he said. “You tole me to watch the loft. Right? So I went up the ladder, but I just only got my head above the loft whenever something hit me. That’s all I know till just about now.”

  “So Cody returned,” said Sly.

  “And ambushed poor ole Butcher,” I said.

  “You s’pose he could be still up there?” Happy said.

  “Why would he want to hang around up there,” I said, “after he’s been discovered?”

  But I was thinking Happy had been right twice just lately and I had been wrong. “I don’t know,” I said. “He might be.”

  Happy put his left hand on a rung of the ladder and slipped out his Colt with his right. Miller stepped up and put a hand on Happy’s left. “Let me do it,” he said. Happy give me a look. Then he let a-loose a’ the ladder and stepped to one side. Miller mounted the ladder quickly, and before I knowed it, he was up on the loft, squatting close to the edge. A bullet exploded, its lead spanging into the board a couple of feet right of Miller’s right foot.

  He made a dive to his left, and then I lost sight of him. “Son of a bitch,” he shouted.

  “The same back to you, you dreary little shit,” came a voice I tuck to belong to Cody.

  “Is that you, Cody?” I yelled out. There was no answer. “You jist as well to give yourself up,” I continued. “You’re way outnumbered here.”

  He still didn’t say nothing, so I said some more.

  “We got you cornered now, boy,” I called. “There ain’t no way out for you.”

  Happy nudged me on the shoulder, and when I looked at him, he nodded toward the far end of the room. There was another ladder up to the loft at that end. I looked at it and back at Happy. I nodded, and he headed for the second ladder. He started climbing.

  “Cody, you silly shit,” I called out, “give it up. You’re just going to get yourself all shot up to pieces is all you’re a-doing.”

  “Oh yeah? No one in your army has hit me yet.”

  Happy climbed up on top and crouched low. And I had heared the voice of the bastard what we all wanted to get. He was up there all right, and so was two a’ my depitties. They couldn’t see much good up there, though. I knowed that on account a’ I had been up there a-looking. It were dark as hell, and they was bales a’ hay stacked all around. I weren’t none too sure a’ Miller up there, on account a’ for an Injun, he didn’t seem to me to have no patience. Happy would be all right, though, I figgered. Then I heared some fast footsteps, and then I seed Miller stand up and snap off a shot, and I heared a yelp too.

  “Did you get the son of a bitch?” I called out.

  “He’s going out the front,” Miller yelled, and I could see enough a’ him that I seed he was a-running for the front a’ the building. You see, they was a second-story door up there on the front a’ the building for the loading a’ hay bales. There weren’t no steps to it nor no ladder out front. There was just a pully up there with a rope a-running through it. I reckon ole Cody, he had run for that open doorway, and then he had jumped to the rope, grabbing on to it to let hisself down to the ground. Miller was after him from up on the loft, and I went a-running for the front door down below.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  When I made it to the front door a-huffing and a-puffing, I didn’t see no sign a’ Cody. It fl ashed through my head again that he was some kinda ghost or something. I felt goose bumps pop up all over my whole entire body, and I shivered. Sly and Dingle come up beside a’ me. Sly just stood looking around, but Dingle, he said, “Where is he?”

  “I know right where the son of a bitch is at, Scribbler,” I said. “That’s how come me to be a-chasing after him just as hard as ever I can go. Can’t you tell?”

  “Barjack?” It was Miller.

  “Whut?” I answered.

  “I think he went up, not down.”

  “What the hell do you mean by that?” I said.

  “I mean I think he’s on the roof.”

  “Surround this damn building,” I said, and Din gle and Sly and Butcher went a-running to do it. Then I said, “See can we shoot holes in his damn feet.” I fired a shot up into the bottom side a’ the roof. Miller and Happy went to doing the same thing. I heard one shot fired from outside, and I figgered that one a’ them out there had caught a glimpse a’ Cody up on the roof. Then I seed ole Stinky-ass a-peeking out from his little office.

  “Stinky,” I yelled at him. “Has you got a gun in there?”

  “Just a old shotgun,” he said, his voice a-trembling.

  “Well, get the damn thing and help us ventilate your roof.”

  He come out with it in a couple a’ minutes, and he was a-shoving shells into the barrels. “It’s a hell of a note when the law forces a man to spoil his own roof,” he said.

  “It’s the best way I know of for you to get a new roof,” I said. “Now get to shooting, goddamn you.”

  He went and blasted a hell of a hole right up over our heads. I emptied my Merwin and Hulbert and stopped to reload. Stinky shot his second shot up into the roof. I looked up at the gaping holes he had made, and it come to me that he could just blast away the whole roof, and then Cody would fall back through. I could tell that Miller was reloading upstairs. Happy had a couple a’ shots yet. I finished up and went to shooting again.

  Then here come Bonnie and Polly a-running like hell was on fire. Bonnie’s monster tits was just a-bouncing all over the place. Both of them had their guns out, and when they got inside the stable, Bonnie said, “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Cody’s up yonder on the roof,” I said, “and we’re trying to put holes in his feet.”

  They didn’t need no more explanation nor encouragement. Both of them went to shooting. Butcher come up to me and tole me a little plan he had. “Are you up to that?” I said.

  “Sure, Barjack,” he said. “He never hurt me that much.”

  “All right then,” I said. “Go on ahead.”

  “Don’t nobody shoot me by mistake,” he said. Then he run to the nearest ladder and dumb up to the loft. He pulled the ladder up behint hisself, and he carried it over to just under where Stinky had blasted a hellacious hole in the roof. He poked that there ladder up through the hole, and then he started up. He went real slow and cautiouslike. It seemed to me like as if it tuck him a hunnert years to get his head poked up through that hole, but final he did it. He got his head and his gun hand poked through. The rest of us had quit shooting, and I was just a-biting on my lip waiting for a gunshot and hoping it would be Butcher’s. But it never come.

  Butcher backed down the ladder a step, getting his head back on the inside, and he looked down at me. “There ain’t no one up here,” he said.

  “That ain’t possible, goddamn it!” I shouted.

  Butcher crawled all the way through the hole then, and he went to walking around all over the roof. He waved down to Dingle and Sly, and by and by, he come back inside through the hole again, and he put the ladder back where it come from and come back down it. He walked over to stand right besid
e a me.

  “No one,” he said.

  “Happy,” I said. “Miller, you just as well come on back down from there.”

  Well, we was all gathered up together in one bunch again, and I was just about ready to suggest we go back to the Hooch House whenever we heared a hellish scream coming from in the back a the stable. I looked over my shoulder just in the nick a’ time to see a big black horse a-slobbering and sling snot all firey eyed and a-running right straight toward us. They was a man in a long-tailed black coat a-setting in the saddle. I don’t know who the hell was a-guiding the horse on account a’ the man had gun in each hand and he was a-blasting with both. I made a belly dive for the side a’ the stable and just in time too. Ever’one else did the same thing.

  Whenever he was gone out the door, we all scrambled back up onto our feet, hauled out our shooters, and ran out the front door after him. But we stopped. We looked around. We never seed him no more.

  “Goddamn it,” I said.

  Then from around the corner, here it come again, that black vision from the depths a’ hell, and once again, it were a-coming straight at us. We scattered again. I was on the ground again. This time when he went in, he shut the big main door and throwed the latch in place. We all jumped up and tried it, but we couldn’t budge it.

  “We could get in through the roof if we had a long ladder,” Butcher said.

  “I’ll get one,” said Happy, and he run off. He was back pretty quick with a long ladder, and he stood it up against the side a’ the stable. He went to climbing up, and pretty soon he had disappeared. About then, Cody stepped up in the middle a’ the open doorway to the loft, and he had a lit lantern in each hand.

  “Goddamn all of you,” he shouted, and he tossed one a’ them lanterns down so that it hit the ground and the front wall a’ the stable both, and it started flames a-licking up the side a’ the building.

  “You damned fool,” I yelled at him. “You’ll burn your own ass up.”

  “The flames of hell don’t frighten me,” he shouted, and he busted the other lantern right at his own feet, and whilst the fire started burning up his legs, he laughed. It were a loud and crazysounding laugh. Polly tuck aim and shot a bullet right smack into his what you call a sternum. He stopped laughing whenever he jerked from the impact a’ the shot, and he stood up there a-swaying in the fl ames.

  Happy opened the front door from inside and started all the horses a-running through it to the outside. Whenever they broke loose they headed all over town.

  “Oh, Lordy,” ole Stinky said. Happy come out to join us, and he looked up and seed Cody on fire and a-laughing up there.

  “By God, Barjack,” he said. “What?”

  “It’s an unholy conflagration,” said Dingle. “The fires of hell have come up here to reclaim their own.”

  “Let’s send him on his way a little faster,” I said, and we each one of us raised our shooters and fired a shot apiece into the burning madman. At last he fell. I reckoned he was dead. We stood there awhile just a-watching the fire, and then we all walked real calm back to the Hooch House. When we was all setting down and we had our drinks, even Sly, nobody said nothing.

  “I think he was a ghost,” said Butcher.

  “I hope you’re wrong,” said Happy. “You can’t kill a ghost.”

  The next day some of us sifted through the ashes till we come onto Cody’s bones and his guns and his belt buckle. He was gone all right, and we was all glad of it. I had to sign some papers and leave them with ole Peester to okay the town a-paying for a new stable for ole Stinky. Ever’thing was quiet again, and I sure as hell was glad of it. I was setting in my office behind my desk and I give ole Happy a look. “He was a for sure ghost, Happy,” I said, “but for sure, we figgered out how to kill him.”

  Happy kinda grinned. “Yessir, Barjack,” he said, “we sure as hell did figger that out.”

  Other Leisure Books by Robert J. Conley:

  NO NEED FOR A GUNFIGHTER

  THE GUNFIGHTER

  BROKE LOOSE

  BARJACK

  BRASS

  THE ACTOR

  INCIDENT AT BUFFALO CROSSING

  BACK TO MALACHI

  Copyright

  A LEISURE BOOK®

  September 2009

  Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.

  200 Madison Avenue

  New York, NY 10016

  Copyright © 2009 by Robert J. Conley

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